Salman Toor's Emerald Green | Art21 "New York Close Up"

(slow music)

(phone dialer)

[Salman Toor, Artist]

(slow music)

["Salman Toor's Emerald Green"]

(phone rings)

- Hello.

[Father over phone]
-Hello, how are you son?

[Toor]
-All is well!

-What's going on with you?

I think I told you about this,

this small painting is going to a museum.

It's going to be hung next
to historical paintings

from seventeenth-century Holland.

It's called the Frick museum.

To me, it is probably the best thing

that's ever going to
happen, ever. (laughs)

So completely unimaginable,

like a couple of years ago.

So I'm just really excited.

(slow music)

Most of these paintings
are based on memory

or the fantasy of memory
of having grown up

in a kind of conservative place.

[Lahore, Pakistan, 1990]

(children singing)

Growing up as fem boy in a
mostly homophobic culture,

it's exciting to put that next to

these pictures of ultra freedom.

(slow music)

In fact, it's kind of
like annoyingly free.

I'm focusing on
the idea that the freedoms

that we all to take for granted here

is pretty vulnerable.

(slow music)

So in 2002, when I moved here,

it was a complete
transformation in my life

because I had never been
to the States before.

I went straight to a college town.

To me, it was magical because
everybody had long hair.

It was okay to be gay.

I was getting into European art history

for the first time.

(papers scratching)

It was an important painting to me

and I haven't looked
at it for a long time.

So it's really,
sort of, refined--

just really gay. (laughs)

Which is great

but like, you know,

in retrospect I would probably
not have the cock in there.

It's like so gratuitous and
it doesn't even have a shadow.

(people laughing)

[Man, off-screen]
- It doesn't have a shadow.

[Toor]
- Yeah it doesn't have a shadow.

(upbeat music)

I did a painting in 2019.

I had thought about it

and I knew what I was going to do

it was going to be like
this nocturnal, late-night

apartment scene with these
three guys having a cool time.

(upbeat music)

It was green and I was
just so pleased with it.

(upbeat music)

There's something glamorous
about emerald green

and something nocturnal, inviting.

(upbeat music)

I wanted to just explore
that color for a while.

(upbeat music)

This particular thing that I do,

I think of them as "fag puddles."

They're sort of heaps of objects

and tubular body parts.

These body parts also have like,

just balls and just feet and it's hairy

and it's just all over the place.

I wanted to go into
that surreal space

when I was going to show it
in the Vermeer room at the Frick

because it's sort of fabulous,
but also pathetic.

So I just wanted to use things

that in my imagination
are personal symbols--

a kind of installation of made-up busts

that look vaguely Buddhist or European.

So, you know, these drawings are really

just about mapping out a composition.

(piano music)

(subway passing)

(piano music)

The paintings are peppered with

nightmarish scenarios that
are based on anxieties

(piano music)

and the kind of movement between

being an empowered new
person in the city, but also,

moments of disempowerment

and maybe even humiliation. (laughs)

Your work, I just love
the confidence in it.

It's just, it's so flowy

[Doron Langberg, artist]

when you use the rainbow as an emblem.

when you use the rainbow as an emblem.
["Salman" by Doron Langberg]

[Doron Langberg]
- When you painted me, I feel you captured

something so specific.

[Toor]
The paintings are a reflection

of most of the conversations
I have with my friends.

Queer friendships about young, fem guys

involved or ensconced
in cosmopolitan culture.

(upbeat music)

- And then this is the other one.

[Visitor]
- And there's also a drawing, correct?

[Toor]
- Yes, the drawing is here.

(car engine roaring)

(footsteps)

Both of us love the stuff in here.

We look at a lot of it,

a lot of our inspiration comes
from these historical works.

It's a really surreal thing
to be a part of something

that can seem like a bit of
an ivory tower sometimes.

(slow music)

[Langberg]
This is what we were looking at,

like, all of our lives.

Thinking of them as just
a continuous language

and history,

and having that in direct conversation

is something that
I didn't necessarily think would happen.

(laughing)

[Toor]
Being from a post-colonial country

where the encounter with Europe changed

and transformed
that region.

It's kind of like coming back
full circle, in a sense.

And it feels really, really
important and poetic.

(upbeat music)